Where the Nurses are Pretty and the Doctors are Pissed

In 1905 George Bernard Shaw wrote a letter to the editor of The Times.

” The Opera management at Covent Garden regulates the dress of its male patrons. When is it going to do the same to the women?

Let me describe what actually happened to me at the opera. An hour after it began, a lady came in and sat down very conspicuously in my line of sight. She remained there until the beginning of the last act. I do not complain of her coming late and going early, on the contrary, I wish she had come later and gone earlier.

For this lady had stuck over her right ear the pitiable corpse of a large white bird, which looked exactly as if someone had killed it by stamping on its breast and then nailed it to the lady’s temple.

I presume if I had presented myself at the opera with a dead snake round my neck, a collection of blackbeetles pinned to my shirtfront and a grouse in my hair, I would have been refused admission.

I once, in Drury Lane Theatre, sat behind a matinee hat decorated with the two wings of a seagull, artificially reddened at the joints so as to produce an illusion of being freshly plucked from a live bird. But even that lady stopped short of the whole seagull.

I suggest to the Covent Garden authorities that, if they feel bound to protect their subscribers against the danger of my shocking them with a blue tie, they are at least equally bound to protect me against the danger of a woman shocking me with a dead bird.”

This reminds me that while modern life seems difficult, there have always been travails, like the misbegotten blending of taxidermy and theater. I never have to fear the squabonnet down at the multiplex.

As a four-year-old I was in a supermarket with my mother. I asked her loudly “Mummy why does that lady have a cake on her head?”

According to my mother she smiled apologetically at the woman, who immediately stormed off in the other direction. I’ve been chatting up women ever since.

Another time whilst I was living in the Cross – just near the Wayside Chapel (a refuge for the homeless) I saw a couple of remarkable looking homeless guys heading towards me. One of them sported a veritable helmet replete with wires, aerials, a fan and a rubber snake wrapped around the edge. As they passed by me he said to his chum “Let’s go down the Wayside, we can score, get a feed, maybe even a root”. And they say hats overheat the brain. I prefer a simple crown myself.

Before piercings were so common place, like about 25 years ago, quite a few times I heard “Mummy, why does that lady have an earring in her nose?” It’s a sleeper not a stud and come to think of it, it still happens occasionally but more often now they ask me rather than their mums. Answer: Because I like it there.